about me

If you are visiting from the “Grow Your Blog” party — Welcome to “Cooking with Amanda!” — I am Amanda and I love to cook. After 23 years in the field of graphic design, I lost my job due to a layoff last summer. While I was out of work, I was looking to keep busy and do something fun, so I created this blog! It has been a perfect distraction. I’ve actually been blogging for years. But this is my first time doing a “cooking” blog. I have a personal blog, a blog about my dog (Jenny the Corgi!) and a blog about my love for all things Aldi. But, “Cooking With Amanda” is my favorite and the one I’d really like to grow.

Jenny the Corgi

So a little about me… aside from being a graphic designer and a self-proclaimed ‘cook’, I also enjoy photography. I’ve been learning a great deal about food photography with this blog and am hoping to become a better photographer through this endeavor. I am married to a wonderful man, who also happens to be an ‘artsy’ type. He also just happens to be a photographer, so he will give advice as needed or requested. And he’ll even let me borrow his lights or his ‘studio’ if I want to use it. Sometimes he uses some of my ‘food creations’ to take his own photos for his stock photography business.

Me

I grew up a Navy brat. I was born in Florida, lived in Virginia and then Puerto Rico. Then my dad retired. To Maine. Imagine moving from Puerto Rico to Maine. (It was a COLD first winter!!) I have now lived in the Northeast (aside from a brief stint in Kentucky) since 1978. I am currently living in the snow belt known as Syracuse, NY. We get A LOT of snow. If you haven’t experienced Lake Effect, you have not lived. (I kid.) I’m not a big fan of snow. Or cold. But this is home. And they do take good care of the roads here. If we get 20″ of snow, it doesn’t slow us down much.

Upstate NY Snow

My son just entered his first year of college this past fall. I thought it would be harder, but it’s actually been an easy transition. We now have an ’empty nest’ and have been making the most of it. We even went on a vacation to our favorite place on earth (Cape Cod!) during the ‘off’ season. It was wonderful. I’m pretty sure we started a new tradition! I think the hardest thing I’ve had to deal with in the ’empty nest’ era is learning how to cook for 2. We’ve had to endure lots of leftovers. But the overall food bill has been considerably lower!

Cape Cod

I look forward to meeting new people and discovering some wonderful new blogs. Feel free to contact me if you’d like. My contact information is on the side bar. You can follow me on Twitter or Instagram as well. Or follow the blog! All the links are on the side. I try to update the blog several times per week. I went back to work full-time a few weeks ago, so I haven’t been able to post as much as I would like. But I do try to get as many posts up per week as possible. If you have any ideas or recipes to share, please send them my way!

To leave a commenton this blog post:
Click on the blog post title, it will bring you to a new page where you can leave a comment.